Required reading

netctl and netcfg are conflicting packages. You will be potentially connectionless after installing netctl, IF your profiles are misconfigured.

Configuration

netctl may be used to introspect and control the state of the systemd services for the network profile manager. Example configuration files are provided for the user to assist them in configuring their network connection. These example profiles are located in /etc/netctl/examples/. The common configurations include:

ethernet-dhcp

ethernet-static

wireless-wpa

wireless-wpa-static

To use an example profile, simply copy one of them from /etc/netctl/examples/ to /etc/netctl/ and configure it to your needs:

# cp /etc/netctl/examples/wireless-wpa /etc/netctl/

Once you have created your profile, make an attempt to establish a connection using the newly created profile by running:

# netctl start <profile>

If issuing the above command results in a failure, then use journalctl -xn and netctl status <profile> in order to obtain a more in depth explanation of the failure. Make the needed corrections to the failed configuration and retest.

Automatic Operation

Just One Profile

If you are using only one profile, once that profile is started successfully, it can be enabled using # netctl enable <profile>. This will create a systemd service that will start when the computer boots.

Multiple Profiles

Whereas with netcfg there was net-auto-wireless.service and net-auto-wired.service, netctl uses netctl-auto@<interface>.service for wireless profiles, and netctl-ifplugd@<interface>.service for wired profiles. Once your profiles are set and verified to be working, simply enable these services with # systemctl enable netctl-auto@<interface>.service and # systemctl netctl-ifplugd@<interface>.service.

If you have previously enabled a profile through netctl, run # netctl disable <profile> to prevent the profile from starting twice at boot, and possibly causing issues with wpa_supplicant.

Note: If there is ever a need to alter a currently enabled profile, execute netctl reenable <profile> to apply the changes.

Migrating from netcfg

Warning: netctl conflicts with netcfg so disable existing netcfg@<profile> service before installing netctl.

In a second terminal window copy the example file wireless-wpa from /etc/netctl/examples to /etc/netctl.

# cp /etc/netctl/examples/wireless-wpa /etc/netctl/wireless-wpa

You will then need to edit /etc/netctl/wireless-wpa using your favorite text editor and add the Encrypted Pre-shared Key that was generated earlier using wpa_passphrase, to the Key variable of this profile.